Colorado (Game 3)

Dear Noles...

I wanted to share some thoughts for those of you that may not have traveled to Boulder. This is especially true for those of you who had a chance to see the game. I say this because the 8 of us that were there were not really able to see said game...

If you can picture a horseshoe. Our seats were in the bottom, bottom, bottom of that iron-clad edifice. We faced....the side of the end zone seats. Those of you on No-doz that were able to remember the second half will recall the Colorado series culminating in a 4th & 29 on their own 2. We were (no exaggeration and I am prone to a wee bit of hyperbole) 140 yards from the play and we were 15 rows from the field. So with this special vantage point, I will relate my thoughts...

We did have a an excellent view of the entrance to the Seminole locker room. Thus I can report that apparently both Neefy Moffit and Preston Parker went overboard on the Rocky Mountain chili. Between series, both stars had to take some "breaks".

We were also able to share some quality time with Ralphie IV, and can relate that this 13 year veteran is...a girl. I also have new found respect for the "handlers" who get tossed around like rag dolls when this beast decides to veer from the anticipated track. We saw one poor girl get mauled as she attempted to shield our long snapper from a buffalo butt spear. How do you write that on the injury report? "A bovinal gluteal tear will keep this young man on the shelf for the next 3 weeks."

I think that TV missed one of the funniest moments this year. A minute into the game, CU called a timeout. They huddled on the side of the field, but on our side of the line of scrimmage to strategize this key moment. Coach Hawkins asked his QB his opinion, talked to his Line and then asked Tony Carter what he thought...Wait a Minute!!! What is Tony Carter doing in our huddle for the last 45 seconds???!! Well, TC was in his natural position and that position happened to be in the middle of their huddle. Colorado had to call a second timeout. And TC was asked by the ref to back up a little for the next 45 seconds. The Buffs were down to 1 timeout and we were not 2 minutes into the game...beautiful...like blueberry pancakes on Sunday morning.

On to football...Our defense played pretty well. Not amazing, stop the presses great, but pretty well. If their FG kicker was not practicing the Miami Two Step, we would have given up two long drives for scores going into the 4th quarter. Some things I did like was that we stoned them on their first two drives, and gave our offense the ball on the 50 twice early in the game (more on that comedy later). We stopped them cold after our first TD to fully grab momentum and when they did get to the 16 in the 3rd quarter, we had three straight negative plays ( which included a slobber knocker sack by Everette Brown, and a perfectly timed run blitz by Geno Hayes) that took them out of chip shot range. Teams are simply not running effectively on us this year, and that is encouraging. I thought all the LB's played better and Dekoda Watson and Toddrick Verdell had their best games as Noles. Patrick Robinson continues to impress me, and it would not shock me to see him replace Micheal Ray Garvin as a starter. Our weakness continues to be getting pressure on the QB. It would not surprise me to see some jailhouse blitzes for Alabama...

Offense..holy moly. We saw Jimbo Fisher walking into the Locker room as we were leaving the Stadium. He looked at the Nole fans walking by and said loud as thunder and unsolicited..."I ain't gonna lie to y'all, we Stunk!". Amen, brother. Y'all stunk. I only ask the obvious question; again. How fricking bad a practice player must X be??? Drew is missing one thing...poise in the pocket. And it is killing us. He simply has no idea when to move, how much to move, where to move and how to throw on the move. I do not see a Mayflower endorsement in his future. I know the line is sucking wind, and I know that DeCody can not catch a plastic fish at the county fair...and I know that Antone is not breaking any tackles right now. However, just because all this is true is why I believe we need a QB that can make things happen in a crapstorm (cleaned up for broadcast). Gawd, I hope we see some better execution in two weeks. Guys are still open and with better blocks and less holding, big running plays could happen. I still think that the offense has hope, but Drew needs perfect execution to be a great QB. From what I have seen, X just needs a playground and some smack talk to make something happen. We will see.

Finally, I guess no one should be surprised by the news that our Punter/ Kickoff specialist Graham Geno is transferring to Colorado. We clearly won the special teams battle and this guy was the big reason. His kickoffs were a mile & a half high and deep. Hell, one almost reached our seats.

Savor the off week!